Former state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, will be the new executive director of the State Bar of California, State Bar President Howard Miller announced today.

Dunn, 52, served in the state Senate from 1998 to 2006, including a stint as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chair; he led the Legislature’s investigation into Enron’s involvement in the 2000-2001 energy crisis. Scared out of the 2006 Democratic primary for state attorney general by Jerry Brown, Dunn instead ran in the 2006 Democratic primary for state Controller, but lost to John Chiang. The Secretary of State’s campaign finance database shows Dunn still has one political committee open, with $105,333.97 at the end of last year.

“I am honored to have been offered this position. My life commitment has been to the legal profession, and there is no better way I can think of to show that commitment than to assist the Board of Governors with its work at the State Bar,” Dunn said in a State Bar news release.

Judy Johnson, the State Bar’s executive director for more than a decade, resigned in January but has stayed on as a consultant through February 2011; Dunn will take over sometime after the State Bar’s annual convention later this week in Monterey.

State Bar President-elect Bill Hebert said he was “extremely pleased that after a thorough search that Senator Dunn, with his extensive background and experience, has been named to the position. He will be a major aid to the Board of Governors as we advance the mission of the Bar and seek to meet the challenges facing the legal profession.”

The State Bar, created by the state legislature in 1927, is a public corporation within the judicial branch of government, serving as an arm of the California Supreme Court. Membership is mandatory for all attorneys licensed to practice law in the state; with more than 226,000 members, it’s by far the nation’s largest state bar.